Elie Wiesel says he escaped kidnap attempt in U.S. hotel

By Shlomo Shamir,

 

Haaretz    Sat., February 10, 2007

Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel told Haaretz on Thursday he escaped a kidnap attempt in a San Francisco hotel last week.

 

Wiesel, 78, whose novels deal with his experience as a Holocaust survivor, said he was grabbed by a stranger in an elevator at the hotel he was staying at for a peace conference and ordered to follow at the risk of violence.

 

In response, Wiesel called for help and the man fled.

 

Police asked Wiesel to keep the event under wraps until progress was made in the investigation.

 

According to San Francisco Police Sgt. Neville Gittens, a man approached
Wiesel, the author of Night, a memoir chronicling his time in a concentration camp, in an elevator and requested an interview with the author on the evening of Feb. 1 at the Argent Hotel.

 

When Wiesel consented to talk in the hotel's lobby, the man insisted it be done in a hotel room and dragged the 78-year-old off the elevator on the sixth floor, Gittens said. The assailant fled after Wiesel began to scream, and Wiesel went to the lobby and called police.

 

Gittens said police are investigating the incident as a crime. Wiesel could not be immediately reached for comment at Boston University, where he teaches, or through his institute in New York.

 

A driver's license in the name of Harry Hunt, a member of a Holocaust denial group, was found in a car parked near the hotel. Hunt has not been located since the event.

 

A posting on a virulent anti-Semitic Web site Tuesday by a person identifying himself as Eric Hunt claimed responsibility.

 

"I had planned to bring Wiesel to my hotel room, where he would truthfully answer my questions regarding the fact that his non-fiction Holocaust memoir, 'Night,' is almost entirely fictitious," Hunt wrote on the site. The poster also said "I had been trailing Wiesel for weeks and had hoped to get Wiesel into my custody, with a cornered Wiesel finally forced to state the truth on videotape."

 

Gittens said investigators were aware of the posting and declined to comment further on the investigation.

 

The anti-Semitic Web site was disabled late Friday. It is registered to Andrew Winkler in North Sydney, Australia.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/824083.html

Critic of Islam Finds New Home in U.S.

By WILLIAM C. MANN

Associated Press     Saturday February 10, 2007 7:16 AM

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - As a child, Ayaan Hirsi Ali fled violence in Somalia with her family. As an adult she fled Kenya to escape an arranged marriage. She left her adopted Holland after she was caught up in political turmoil and had her life threatened. Now Hirsi Ali - a brave critic of Islam to her supporters, a bigot to her critics - has found refuge in the intellectual bastion of leading U.S. conservatives.

 

Hirsi Ali joined the American Enterprise Institute last September, after a sometimes stormy 14 years in the Netherlands, where she was a member of parliament and became a central figure in two events that jolted the nation.

 

First, after she wrote a script for a film that depicted naked women with Quranic verses scrawled on their bodies, a Dutch-born Muslim gunned down the filmmaker, Theo van Gogh. A letter threatening Hirsi Ali was left on a knife plunged into van Gogh's chest.

 

Next, a fight within Hirsi Ali's political party over her Dutch citizenship brought down the government.

 

These days, Hirsi Ali is promoting her autobiography, ``Infidel.'' It gives a graphic account of how she rejected her faith and the violence she says was inflicted on her in the name of Islam.

 

``I'm an apostate. That's why the book is called 'Infidel,''' she said in a telephone interview from New York.

 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations thinks Hirsi Ali's campaign amounts to slander and bigotry.

 

``We believe that contributes to a growing level of Muslim hatred in America,'' said the council's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper. ``It is unfortunate that she had to bring that kind of hate from Europe to the United States.''

 

Her new colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute laud Ali Hirsi as a brave voice taking on a taboo subject.

 

``She's very original, a very courageous thinker, and she has independence of mind,'' said Christina Hoff Sommers, an institute fellow who specializes, among other things, in feminism.

 

At the institute, Hirsi Ali's studies will involve Islam and women: the relationship between the West and Islam; women's rights in Islam; violence against women propagated by religious and cultural arguments; and Islam in Europe.

 

Many institute scholars have had a close relationship with the Bush administration. Among its senior fellows are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney.

 

It may seem like odd company for a woman born in a Mogadishu hospital 37 years ago.

 

``I've been accused of selling out,'' she said. ``I've been told, 'You're hanging the dirty laundry outside.'''

 

Ali Hirsi's book provides a graphic account of how her grandmother had her subjected to genital mutilation, sometimes called female circumcision, when she was 5 years old. The practice began in Africa, before Islam, but some African Muslim societies still see it as a requirement of religion.

 

She also describes a time when she was a teenager in Kenya, a majority Christian country with many Muslim Somali refugees, and a Quran teacher cracked her skull after she challenged his insistence that students write Quranic verses on wooden boards and memorize them.

 

``I started to call him uncivilized and backward and said he lived in the time of ignorance before Islam had come around and this was an outrageous system,'' she said. The man bashed her head against the wall.

 

She lied to be accepted as a refugee in Holland, became a Dutch citizen, graduated from prestigious Leiden University and won a seat in the Dutch parliament for a party that was tough on immigration. She became known as a firebrand.

 

That led to her collaboration with van Gogh on the short television movie, ``Submission.'' In 2004, a man enraged by the movie shot van Gogh seven times and slit his throat on an Amsterdam street, leaving the note threatening Hirsi Ali.

 

Her lie when she entered the country - she used an assumed name - caught up with her last year. By that time her falsehood was widely known, even to her good friend Rita Verdonk, the immigration minister. Because of a notorious similar case in which Verdonk expelled a young woman, she came under pressure to cancel Hirsi Ali's citizenship. She did, and the six members of the government's smallest coalition party resigned in protest. The government fell, although Verdonk had used a technicality to restore Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship.

 

Considering van Gogh's death, and her continuing outspokenness about Islam, Hirsi Ali said she no longer can feel safe without bodyguards in the presence of even moderate Muslims.

 

Unlike many world leaders, including Bush, who say Muslim terrorists are distorting the peaceful Islamic religion, Hirsi Ali said the terrorists in large part have truth on their side: The violence is in the Quran and the hadith, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, she said.

 

Islam today, she said, ``is not my grandmother's amulet-wearing, superstitious sort of Islam that is just comforting for the believer.'' Today's Islam sees the world as its enemy, she said. ``And you wage war against your enemies.''

 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations' Hooper contends that she exaggerates to further her agenda.

 

``She is just one more Muslim-basher on the lecture circuit,'' he said.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6406690,00.html

South African trade union calls for boycott in fresh solidarity declaration

Worldwide Activism, The Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, February 10th, 2007

 

The Food and Allied Workers' Union (FAWU) has condemned three major South African food stores - Shoprite Checkers, Pick 'n Pay and Fruit and Veg - for their import of agricultural produce from Israel.

 

In a press statement released on 23 January the Union state:

 

"We are appalled at the insensitivity towards the plight of the Palestinian people by the procurement of supplies from an oppressive, apartheid country like Israel. It seems like rubbing salt in the wounds of Palestinians to procure supplies.

 

Citing the continuing imports of avocado pears from Israel, the press statement goes on to state that:

 

"We are convinced that the import of these goods are in contravention of the spirit of various International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions.

 

"We call on the above retailers to immediately cease importing produce from Israel . Whilst we are glad about the number of locally procured goods, we feel that stores like yourselves could easily procure these "out of season" goods from other countries, even if it means paying a slightly higher price. According to figures quoted by Shoprite Group Managing Director, Brian Weyers, the store imports 1,12% of total imported produce from Israel. Being a relatively small percentage, it should therefore not make a huge difference to import from other countries who do not oppress.

 

"Retailers such as yourselves should not have to wait for formal trade agreements by e.g. the UN or South African government to behave in a morally acceptable manner by rejecting produce from oppressive countries like Israel. In fact, experience in the apartheid South Africa era should have taught us to set the standard when it comes to condemning racist, oppressive behaviour."

 

The Call echoes some of the appeals made in recent months from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a federation of numerous trade unions and is based in the spirit of the international solidarity which marked global anti-apartheid boycotts and sanctions in the 1970s and 80s.

 

 

http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/1400.shtml

FBI Investigation of AIPAC Reportedly Has Been "Expanded"

by Andrew I. Killgore

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs which is published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a non-profit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. He gets featured on Media Monitors Network (MMN) with the courtesy of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Media Monitors Network   Friday February 09 2007

 

"Time described the Harman/AIPAC investigation as a "spin-off" of the investigation that led to the charges against Rosen and Weissman, as well as to a 12-and-a-half year prison sentence against Larry Franklin. The former Pentagon Iran specialist pleaded guilty to improper disclosure of classified information about the Middle East to the two AIPAC lobbyists, who in turn were indicted for passing it on to a journalist and to a foreign government—in the words of Time magazine, "believed to be" Israel."

 

In 1999 the FBI began an investigation of Steve Rosen, foreign policy director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Israel lobby's Iran specialist, Keith Weissman. The two AIPAC wheeler-dealers were indicted on Aug. 4, 2005 under the seldom-used Espionage Act. Since then their trial date has been postponed several times, but now seems likely to begin in early 2007 in Alexandria, at the Federal District Court for Eastern Virginia.

 

Meanwhile, across the Potomoc in Washington, DC, another sensational case involving AIPAC has surfaced. According to the Oct. 20 issue of Time magazine, the Department of Justice and the FBI have an "ongoing" investigation into whether Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) and AIPAC arranged for wealthy donors to lobby House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (also D-CA) on Harman's behalf, and whether in return Harman agreed to help persuade the Bush administration to go lighter on Rosen and Weissman.

 

Time described the Harman/AIPAC investigation as a "spin-off" of the investigation that led to the charges against Rosen and Weissman, as well as to a 12-and-a-half year prison sentence against Larry Franklin. The former Pentagon Iran specialist pleaded guilty to improper disclosure of classified information about the Middle East to the two AIPAC lobbyists, who in turn were indicted for passing it on to a journalist and to a foreign government—in the words of Time magazine, "believed to be" Israel.

 

Relations between the neocon-ish Harman and the House Democratic leader soured when Harman learned that Pelosi planned not to reappoint her to the House Intelligence Committee. As the committee's ranking minority member, Harman stood to become chair if the Democrats won the House in the November elections.

 

The spurned Harman embarked on an aggressive campaign to persuade Pelosi to reappoint her. According to Time, the alternative LA Weekly reported that Harman "had some major contributors call Pelosi to impress on her the importance of keeping her as head of the House Intelligence Committee. These tactics did not endear Harman to Pelosi."

 

Among those who called Pelosi on Harman's behalf, according to Time, was billionaire Zionist Haim Saban.

 

Harman has hired GOP super lawyer Ted Olson, a former solicitor general, because, Olson told Time, "she is not aware of any such [FBI] investigation, does not believe it is occurring and wanted to make sure you and your editors know that as far as she knows, that's not true…No one from the Justice Department has contacted her."

 

The New York Times of Oct. 24 and the following day's Washington Post carried articles on the AIPAC/Harman affair, although both denigrated the matter. The Jewish Forward of Oct. 27, however, saying the investigation has been "expanded," described the controversy as "explosive."

 

http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/40754/

Hamas deals swift blow to peace deal hopes

· We will never recognise Israel, says Gaza leader
· Mecca deal brings hostile reaction in Jerusalem

 

Ian Black, Middle East editor

The Guardian   Saturday February 10, 2007

 

Renewed hopes for a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process suffered an early blow yesterday when the Palestinian movement Hamas pledged it would never recognise Israel, only hours after signing a Saudi-backed national unity agreement to help stave off an incipient civil war.

 

Nizar Rayyan, a Hamas leader in Gaza, brushed aside any room for ambiguity. He told Reuters: "We will never recognise Israel. There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination."

 

This unequivocal language followed overnight celebrations in Gaza and the West Bank, and punctured a rare burst of cautious optimism about Thursday's power-sharing deal between the Islamists of Hamas and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

 

Arab hopes had focused on ending both the internal crisis and the international boycott in force since Hamas won last year's elections. The consequences have included the siege of Gaza, rocket attacks on Israel, war in Lebanon and hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israelis, as well as nearly 100 victims of internecine fighting. Fifteen Israelis died during the same period. The peace process disappeared and Iranian influence in the region increased.

 

The Mecca agreement should make it harder for Israel to resist pressure to end the sanctions. Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas will remain prime minister, but Salam Fayyad, admired in the US and Europe, is designated finance minister, a safe pair of hands to administer vital foreign assistance. The interior minister, running the security forces, will be an independent figure in the more moderate new government.

 

Optimism may be unwarranted because the agreement made no mention of recognising Israel, a requirement demanded by Israel itself and laid down by the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers - the UN, EU, US and Russia - for lifting the sanctions. Mr Abbas had wanted a clear statement that the new government would be "committed" to past peace accords, as a formula offering at least implicit recognition of Israel from Hamas.

 

But a letter from Mr Abbas called on the Islamist movement to "abide by the interests of the Palestinian people" and "respect international law and agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation". That includes the 1993 Israeli-PLO Oslo agreement and the 2002 Arab League peace plan. Progress depends on fudges like this being ignored so that Mr Abbas is given a mandate to negotiate with Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, while Hamas leaders look the other way.

 

Movement also depends on Israel pragmatically ignoring the Hamas presence - effectively accepting that Mr Abbas's deeds matter more than Islamist words.

 

Tzahi Hanegbi, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Israeli parliament, said Mr Abbas had "awarded a significant victory to Hamas".

 

"The chance of advancing an effective initiative and an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians has receded."

 

The US said the terms of the agreement had to be accepted "clearly and credibly" while the EU said it would study it "in a positive but cautious manner". France welcomed it while Britain called the accord "interesting".

 

Pressure has been mounting in recent weeks for a review of the EU position on sanctions that have caused ordinary Palestinians to suffer while neither weakening nor changing Hamas.

 

Nabil Amr, an aide to Mr Abbas, told Reuters: "I cannot say, and we don't have great expectations, that this agreement will completely end the siege, but it will pave the way to end it."

 

Palestinians should quickly feel the benefit of Saudi funding, clearing the way for full salary payments for public sector employees for the first time since Hamas came to power. Israel looks likely to continue withholding tax revenues.

Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

 

Despite denials, Pentagon plans for possible attack on nuclear sites are well advanced

 

Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian    Saturday February 10, 2007

 

US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.

 

The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.

 

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.

 

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

 

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

 

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

 

Deployment

 

Mr Cannistraro, who worked for the CIA and the National Security Council, stressed that no decision had been made.

 

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

 

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.

 

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.

 

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

 

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."

 

One of the main driving forces behind war, apart from the vice-president's office, is the AEI, headquarters of the neo-conservatives. A member of the AEI coined the slogan "axis of evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Its influence on the White House appeared to be in decline last year amid endless bad news from Iraq, for which it had been a cheerleader. But in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state department, Mr Bush opted last month for an AEI plan to send more troops to Iraq. Will he support calls from within the AEI for a strike on Iran?

 

Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the AEI, is among its most vocal supporters of such a strike.

 

"I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself." But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

 

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

 

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

 

Other neo-cons elsewhere in Washington are opposed to an air strike but advocate a different form of military action, supporting Iranian armed groups, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though the state department has branded it a terrorist organisation.

 

Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee, which includes former officials from the White House, state department and intelligence services, is a leading advocate of support for the MEK. If it comes to an air strike, he favours bunker-busting bombs. "I believe the only way to get at the deeply buried sites at Natanz and Arak is probably to use bunker-buster bombs, some of which are nuclear tipped. I do not believe the US would do that but it has sold them to Israel."

 

Opposition support

 

Another neo-conservative, Meyrav Wurmser, director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, also favours supporting Iranian opposition groups. She is disappointed with the response of the Bush administration so far to Iran and said that if the aim of US policy after 9/11 was to make the Middle East safer for the US, it was not working because the administration had stopped at Iraq. "There is not enough political will for a strike. There seems to be various notions of what the policy should be."

 

In spite of the president's veto on negotiation with Tehran, the state department has been involved since 2003 in back-channel approaches and meetings involving Iranian officials and members of the Bush administration or individuals close to it. But when last year the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a letter as an overture, the state department dismissed it within hours of its arrival.

 

Support for negotiations comes from centrist and liberal thinktanks. Afshin Molavi, a fellow of the New America Foundation, said: "To argue diplomacy has not worked is false because it has not been tried. Post-90s and through to today, when Iran has been ready to dance, the US refused, and when the US has been ready to dance, Iran has refused. We are at a stage where Iran is ready to walk across the dance floor and the US is looking away."

 

He is worried about "a miscalculation that leads to an accidental war".

 

The catalyst could be Iraq. The Pentagon said yesterday that it had evidence - serial numbers of projectiles as well as explosives - of Iraqi militants' weapons that had come from Iran. In a further sign of the increased tension, Iran's main nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, cancelled a visit to Munich for what would have been the first formal meeting with his western counterparts since last year.

 

If it does come to war, Mr Muravchik said Iran would retaliate, but that on balance it would be worth it to stop a country that he said had "Death to America" as its official slogan.

 

"We have to gird our loins and prepare to absorb the counter-shock," he said.

 

War of words

 

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly"
George Bush, in an interview with National Public Radio

 

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many ways. They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point"
Robert Gates

 

"I think it's been pretty well-known that Iran is fishing in troubled waters"
Dick Cheney

 

"It is absolutely parallel. They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux"
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter- terrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, on echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq

 

"US policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response. Enemies of the Islamic system fabricated various rumours about death and health to demoralise the Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation"
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Robert Fisk: Conspiracy of silence in the Arab world

Where are the sheikhs when the Iraqi dead are fished out of the Tigris?

Independent   10 February 2007

 

Could Rifaat al-Assad's day in court be growing closer? Yes, Rifaat - or Uncle Rifaat to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria - the man whose brother Hafez hurled him from Damascus after he tried to use his special forces troops to stage a coup. They were the same special forces who crushed the Islamist rebellion in Hama in February 1982, slaughtering up to - well, a few thousand, according to the regime, at least 10,000 according to Fisk (who was there) and up 20,000 if you believe The New York Times (which I generally don't).

 

Either way, I've always regarded it as a war crime, along with the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut by Israel's Lebanese militia allies a few months later. Ariel Sharon, who was held personally responsible by Israel's own court of enquiry, is an unindicted war criminal. So is Rifaat.

 

That's why the faintest breeze blew through my fax machine this week when I received a letter sent to the UN Secretary General by Malik al-Abdeh, head of the London-based Movement for Justice and Development in Syria. Abdeh left his Syrian town of Zabadani before the Hama massacres - he works now as an IT consultant for a multinational - so he's hardly able to breathe the air of Sister Syria. But then again nor can Rifaat, who languishes - complete with bodyguards - in that nice EU island of refuge called Marbella. And refuge he probably needs. Because Abdeh is asking the UN to institute an enquiry into the Hama bloodbath in the same way that it is powering along with its tribunal into the murder almost two years ago of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

 

Ouch. In the letter Abdeh describes how "warplanes and tanks levelled whole districts of the city (of Hama) ... the evidence clearly suggests that government forces made no distinction between armed insurgents and unarmed civilians ... the assault on the city represents a clear act of war crimes and murder on a mass scale". The letter has now been passed to the UN's legal head, Nicolas Michel, who is also involved in the Hariri murder case. The sacred name of Rifaat has not been mentioned in the letter but it specifically demands that "those who are responsible should be held accountable and charged...".

 

Now, of course, there are a few discrepancies in the facts. The Syrians did not use poison gas in Hama, as Abdeh claims. They certainly did level whole areas of the city - they are still level today, although a hotel has been built over one devastated district - and when Rifaat's thugs combed through the ruins later, they executed any civilians who couldn't account for their presence.

 

But of course, the Hama uprising was also a Sunni Muslim insurrection and the insurgents had murdered entire families of Baath party officials, sometimes by chopping off their heads. In underground tunnels, Muslim girls had exploded themselves among Syrian troops - they were among the Middle East's first suicide bombers although we didn't appreciate that then. And the Americans were not at all unhappy that this Islamist insurgency had been crushed by Uncle Rifaat. Readers will not need any allusion to modern and equally terrible events involving Sunni insurgents to the east of Syria. And since the Americans are getting pretty efficient at killing civilians along with gunmen, I have a dark suspicion that there won't be any great enthusiasm in Washington for a prosecution over Hama.

 

But still... What strikes me is not so much the force of Abdeh's letter but that it was written at all. When the Hama massacre occurred, neighbouring Arab states were silent. Although the Sunni prelates of the city called for a religious war, their fellow clerics in Damascus - and, indeed, in Beirut - were silent. Just as the imams and scholars of Islam were silent when the Algerians began to slaughter each other in a welter of head-chopping and security force executions in the 1990s.

 

Just as they are silent now over the mutual killings in Iraq. Sure, the mass killings of Iraq would not have occurred if we hadn't invaded the country. And I do suspect a few "hidden hands" behind the civil conflict in a nation which never before broke apart. In Algeria, the French spent a lot of time in the early 1960s persuading - quite successfully - their FLN and ALN enemies to murder each other. But where are the sheikhs of Al-Azhar and the great Arabian kingdoms when the Iraqi dead are fished out of the Tigris and cut down in their thousands in Baghdad, Kerbala, Baquba? They, too, are silent.

 

Not a word of criticism. Not a hint of concern. Not a scintilla (an Enoch Powell word, this) of sympathy. An Israeli bombardment of Lebanon? Even an Israeli invasion? That's a war crime - and the Arabs are right, the Israelis do commit war crimes. I saw the evidence of quite a few last summer. But when does Arab blood become less sacred? Why, when it is shed by Arabs. It's not just a failure of self-criticism in the Arab world. In a landscape ruled by monsters whom we in the West have long supported, criticism of any kind is a dodgy undertaking. But can there not be one small sermon of reprobation for what Iraqi Muslims are doing to Iraqi Muslims?

 

Of course, but the real problem the Arabs now face is that their lands have been overrun and effectively occupied by Western armies. I worked out a few weeks ago that, per head of population - and the world was smaller in the 12th century - there are now about 22 times more Western soldiers in Muslim lands than there were at the time of the Crusades. How do you strike back at these legions and drive them out? Brutally and most terribly, the Iraqis have shown how. I used to say the future of the Bush administration will be decided in Iraq, not in Washington. And this now appears to be true.

 

So what should we do? Allow the Rifaats of this world to go on enjoying Marbella? And the killers of Hariri go free? And the Arabs remain silent in the face of the shameful atrocities which their brother Muslims have also committed? I'll take a bet that Rifaat will be safe from the UN lads. In Iraq right now, he'd be on "our" side, wouldn't he, battling the Islamic insurgency as he did in Hama? And that, I fear, is the problem. We are all Rifaats now.

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2255669.ece

Charlize angers US

News24.com 09/02/2007 21:17  - (SA) 

 

Charles Smith,

Beeld

Washington - Charlize Theron has upset Americans with comments made during a CNN interview in which she compared America and Cuba with regards to the restrictions placed on human freedom.

 

Theron this week made her debut as a movie producer with the movie East of Havana, a documentary film about rap singers in Cuba.

 

After the interview, newspapers published headlines referring to her as a "dumb blonde" and articles wondered whether she was just another Hollywood left-winger.

 

The New York Daily News wrote an article with the heading "Just another pretty face".

 

The article said that it was accepted that Charlize Theron was blonde and that now it had been proven that she was stupid as well.

 

Most Americans however, felt she had been treated unfairly by journalist Rick Sanchez who refused to let go of the subject while talking about the movie. There were also claims that she was quoted out of context.

 

Theron was criticised for saying that there was a lack of freedom in America. She said that TV reporters in the US were fired for commenting about the US war, just like rap singers in Cuba had to show their lyrics before they were allowed to perform.

 

Theron also said she loved America, however, and this is why she lived in the US.

 

http://www.news24.com/News24/Entertainment/Celebrities/0,9294,2-1225-2108_2067208,00.html

Robert Fisk : Iraqi insurgents offer peace in return for US concessions

The Independent   02/09/07

 

 For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago.

 

The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet - but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.

 

Al-Jeelani's group, which also calls itself the "20th Revolution Brigades'', is the military wing of the original insurgent organisation that began its fierce attacks on US forces shortly after the invasion of 2003. The statement is, therefore, of potentially great importance, although it clearly represents only the views of Sunni Muslim fighters.

 

Shia militias are nowhere mentioned. The demands include the cancellation of the entire Iraqi constitution - almost certainly because the document, in effect, awards oil-bearing areas of Iraq to Shia and Kurds, but not to the minority Sunni community. Yet the Sunnis remain Washington's principal enemies in the Iraqi war.

 

"Discussions and negotiations are a principle we believe in to overcome the situation in which Iraqi bloodletting continues," al-Jeelani said in a statement that was passed to The Independent. "Should the Americans wish to negotiate their withdrawal from our country and leave our people to live in peace, then we will negotiate subject to specific conditions and circumstances."

 

Al-Jeelani suggests the United Nations, the Arab League or the Islamic Conference might lead such negotiations and would have to guarantee the security of the participants.

 

Then come the conditions:

 

* The release of 5,000 detainees held in Iraqi prisons as "proof of goodwill".

 

* Recognition "of the legitimacy of the resistance and the legitimacy of its role in representing the will of the Iraqi people".

 

* An internationally guaranteed timetable for all agreements.

 

* The negotiations to take place in public.

 

* The resistance "must be represented by a committee comprising the representatives of all the jihadist brigades".

 

* The US to be represented by its ambassador in Iraq and the most senior commander.

 

It is not difficult to see why the Americans would object to those terms. They will not want to talk to men they have been describing as "terrorists" for the past four years. And if they were ever to concede that the "resistance" represented "the will of the Iraqi people" then their support for the elected Iraqi government would have been worthless.

 

Indeed, the insurgent leader specifically calls for the "dissolution of the present government and the revoking of the spurious elections and the constitution..."

 

He also insists that all agreements previously entered into by Iraqi authorities or US forces should be declared null and void.

 

But there are other points which show that considerable discussion must have gone on within the insurgency movement - possibly involving the group's rival, the Iraqi Islamic Army.

 

They call, for example, for the disbandment of militias and the outlawing of militia organisations - something the US government has been urging the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to do for months.

 

The terms also include the legalisation of the old Iraqi army, an "Anglo-American commitment to rebuild Iraq and reconstruct all war damage" - something the occupying powers claim they have been trying to do for a long time - and integrating "resistance fighters" into the recomposed army.

 

Al-Jeelani described President George Bush's new plans for countering the insurgents as "political chicanery" and added that "on the field of battle, we do not believe that the Americans are able to diminish the capability of the resistance fighters to continue the struggle to liberate Iraq from occupation ...

 

"The resistance groups are not committing crimes to be granted a pardon by America, we are not looking for pretexts to cease our jihad... we fight for a divine aim and one of our rights is the liberation and independence of our land of Iraq."

 

There will, the group says, be no negotiations with Mr Maliki's government because they consider it "complicit in the slaughter of Iraqis by militias, the security apparatus and death squads". But they do call for the unity of Iraq and say they "do not recognise the divisions among the Iraqi people".

 

It is not difficult to guess any American response to those proposals. But FLN [National Liberation Front] contacts with France during the 1954-62 war of independence by Algeria began with such a series of demands - equally impossible to meet but which were eventually developed into real proposals for a French withdrawal.

 

What is unclear, of course, is the degree to which al-Jeelani's statement represents the collective ideas of the Sunni insurgents. And, ominously, no mention is made of al-Qa'ida.

 

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Morocco hopes to host US African Command

Middle East Newsline   Fri, 09 Feb 2007

 

RABAT, Morocco [MENL] -- Morocco hopes to host the new U.S. military command planned for Africa.

 

Officials said the North African kingdom intends to offer a home to the new African Command as part of expanded military cooperation with the United States. They said Morocco represents the most stable country on the African continent.

 

"We have the infrastructure as well as the society that accepts foreigners," an official said. "It would be a good choice and we hope to discuss this seriously with our friends in Washington."

 

On Feb. 6, the Defense Department announced a new U.S. Africa Command, known as Africom. The command would coordinate virtually all of the U.S. military and security interests throughout the continent.

 

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2007/february/02_09_4.html

Seeing what we want to see in Qaddafi

Hisham Matar

The International Herald Tribune Published: February 5, 2007

PARIS: Sheep or wolf?

Since 2003, Libyan diplomats have been hard at work convincing the West that Libya is no longer interested in amassing weapons of mass destruction, blowing up Western airplanes or covertly financing armed movements abroad. Presenting this new face has been largely effective: Sanctions, in place since 1982, have been lifted; Libya has been removed from the U.S. roster of terrorist nations; and the list of international trade agreements continues to grow.

As part of this public relations drive, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi and his officials have been keen to reassure Libyan critics that it is now safe to return to Libya. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of exiled Libyans have not returned. However, one did: Idrees Boufayed, a doctor living and working in Switzerland.

On Sept. 30, 2006, he returned to Libya for the first time in 16 years. And on Nov. 5, he disappeared.

Throughout its 37-year rule, the Qaddafi government has found as many reasons to arrest its citizens as Libyans have found to abandon their country. Thousands of critics of the Qaddafi regime, inside and outside Libya, have either disappeared or been assassinated. My father, the political dissident Jaballa Matar, disappeared from his home in Cairo in March 1990. We still do not know whether he is alive or dead.

Astonishingly, on Dec. 29 — 55 days after his arrest — Boufayed was released. The Libyan authorities offered no explanation for his detention. And Boufayed, who had been a regular contributor to dissident Web sites, has remained uncharacteristically silent ever since. This change in behavior is not unusual: Almost all political dissidents fortunate enough to be released have given up their criticism of the regime. The machinery of Qaddafi's government is as effective as ever.

Now that the United States has incorporated the Libyan regime into its so-called war on terrorism, it is difficult to see what political pressure it can exert on the Libyan government to reform. Western governments have had the power to effect change in Libya only as long as the dictator's government has hungered for the West's acceptance.

The short-sighted paranoia with which the war on terrorism has been managed has weakened any moral advantage the United States might once have had.

The cards surrendered were hugely undervalued: The United States could have compelled the Libyan dictatorship to do much more than just hand over its outdated weapons of mass destruction and compensate the families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, with $2.7 billion — a sum that would be earned back in trade deals during the first week after sanctions were lifted.

Although America has highlighted the issue of human rights in its negotiations with Libya, none of the countries that now profit from a close association with the Libyan leadership has demanded the release, or even the trial, of the silenced political prisoners who crowd Libya's prisons. No country made it a condition in negotiations that Libya investigate the countless cases of the "disappeared." None of them compelled the Qaddafi government even to address the massacre at Abu Salim prison, where, one night in June 1996, more than 1,000 political prisoners were shot and killed. In its 2003 negotiations with Libya, the United States lost a golden opportunity to link the improvement of Libya's dismal human-rights situation to its acceptance into the international community. Indeed, it can be argued that the United States has instead helped worsen human rights in Libya. It has not only defended torture, which has softened the critical gaze on Libya's own practice of torture, but also encouraged the practice by sending Libyans suspected of terrorism to Tripoli for "interrogation."

Furthermore, Qaddafi has used the new panic — that the Islamist bogeyman will imminently shroud the world under his dark beard — as an excuse to silence critics. That tactic has fomented rather than curbed religious extremism in Libya as elsewhere.

The impression that a bloodless battle has been won in Libya rests on an inflated notion of the threat the country, even with its rusty weapons of mass destruction, ever posed to the West. It misreads an act of diplomatic negligence toward the rights of the Libyan people as a victory for world peace.

Qaddafi deserves sole credit for Libya's foreign policy U-turn. He has never found it necessary to devote himself to a single political ideology; his only consistent policy has been to guard his personal political survival. The United States and Britain understand this, but have only exploited it for their own myopic objectives, forgetting that Libya's political development can lie only with its people.


more here http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/05/opinion/edmatar.php?page=2


http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/05/opinion/edmatar.php

These moderates are in fact fanatics, torturers and killers

The longer the US and Britain back dictatorial regimes in the Middle East the more explosive the region will become

Mai Yamani

· Mai Yamani is author of Cradle of Islam, and Changed Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia myamani@btinternet.com

The Guardian Tuesday February 6, 2007

Politicians, especially in times of geopolitical deadlock, adopt a word or a concept to sell to the public. In 1973, at the peak of cold-war tensions, the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, coined the term "detente". Such words gain a currency and become useful political tools to escape policy quagmires. As the Middle East lurches from crisis to crisis, Tony Blair, George Bush and Condoleezza Rice compulsively repeat the word "moderates" to describe their allies in the region. But the concept of moderate is merely the latest attempt to market a failed policy, while offering a facile hedge against accusations of Islamophobia and anti-Islamic policies.

Western leaders have simply chosen a few Arab rulers they believe are still saleable to western audiences. And, as the word moderate has been repeated by western leaders and echoed in the international media, these rulers have begun to believe their own billing. But who are they, and are they moderate? Their selection has been fluid at the periphery but solid at the core. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt clearly qualify, whereas Syria, an ally during the 1990-91 Gulf war, was once at the periphery but fell out of step with US interests after 9/11. Likewise, after the death of Arafat and the victory of Hamas, Fatah became moderate, while Iran, moderate under the shah, became "radical" after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

This minuet of political marketing may play well in the west, but not in the Arab world, where the double standards and manipulation are all too plain to see. The Saudi Wahhabis are, after all, fanatics; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is intolerant of dissent; and Jordan, the state closest to the western ideal, is a marginal player. These countries' appalling human rights records, lack of transparency and repression rank them among the world's least moderate. Is there such a thing as a "moderate public beheading"? For the US and UK governments there clearly is, because all departures from the ideals of liberal democracy and social justice are rooted in "tradition". Hence bribes, beheadings and the oppression of women and minorities are traditional, and because whatever is traditional is not radical, it must be moderate.

Nothing, it seems, is more moderate than inertia. So inertia pays. Egypt has received an average of $1.3bn a year in military aid from the US since 1979, and $815m a year in economic assistance. Saudi Arabia relies on oil revenues and the international legitimacy provided by membership of such moderate bulwarks as the WTO and the IMF.

But at home, all other hallmarks of moderation are missing. Amnesty International describes Saudi Arabia as a country where "there are no political parties, no elections, no independent legislature, no trade unions ... no independent judiciary, no independent human rights organisations. The government allows no international human rights organisations to carry out research in the country ... there is strict censorship of media within the country, and strict control of access to the internet, satellite television and other forms of communication with the outside world."

Likewise, Human Rights Watch's report on Egypt describes Mubarak's government as using a "heavy hand against political dissent in 2006. In April 2006, the government renewed emergency rule for an additional two years, providing a continued basis for arbitrary detention and trials before military and state security courts. Torture at the hands of security forces remains a serious problem." Amnesty's report on Egypt concurred: "Torture continued to be used systematically in detention centres ... Several people died in custody in circumstances suggesting that torture or ill-treatment may have caused or contributed to their deaths."

The use of moderate to describe such leaders is necessary to mask the death of Bush's "freedom agenda" in the Middle East, with its lofty goal of regionwide democratisation. Indeed, Rice's visit to Egypt in January emphasised the word moderate and completely ignored the word democracy.

The moderates are not democrats, but they are politically useful because of what else they are not: they are not Persian and not Shia, not defiant and not able to act independently of the US. They are moderate only because they do not need to be more radical to achieve absolute power. Mubarak already exercises it, and the al-Sauds are satisfied with the current level of fanaticism in the kingdom. Some are armchair jihadis, but their Islamism serves only to prop up their domestic legitimacy.

What the moderates do need is continued western military and financial cover. So they remain ideological stalwarts. If communism was the enemy of the US, then it was their enemy. If Shia Iran is America's enemy today, it is also the enemy of America's moderate allies.

The relationship with the west is a two-way street. The Saudis invest billions in the US, buy weapons they don't need or cannot use, and provide a thriving market for western goods. But, like Mubarak, the Saudi rulers are old and on the defensive against their own people. The more the US shelters them, the more their legitimacy erodes. And the longer Washington and London prolong the state of denial with the help of pithy and amorphous buzzwords, the more explosive the Middle East will become.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2006728,00.html

Archbishop in police state warning

Press Association

Guardian Monday February 5, 2007 6:43 AM

The Archbishop of York has warned that Britain was in danger of "coming close to a police state" in the wake of the arrest of suspected terrorists in Birmingham.

Dr John Sentamu, who fled Uganda in the 1970s, criticised 90-day detention, likening it with his home country under the tyrannical rule of Idi Amin.

"If you detain people, you must have good enough reason for detaining them and have a chance for there being a successful prosecution," he said.

He continued: "The Home Secretary has not produced the evidence that shows that in 90 days you're capable of getting somebody prosecuted.

"Why does he want these days, so the police do what? Gather more evidence? To me that becomes, if you're not very careful, very close to a police state in which they pick you up and then they say later on we'll find evidence against you. That's what happened in Uganda with Idi Amin."

He spoke out in an interview with ITV News as West Midlands Police continued to question nine people arrested in Birmingham over an alleged plot to kidnap and murder a Muslim soldier.

The Archbishop also urged people coming to live in the UK to adopt and "cherish" British values.

The second most senior cleric in the Church of England said: "If you are in Britain and you're British, you should really cherish the traditions that are here.

"In a (democratic) country like this to then say: I am going to kidnap somebody, I'm going to kill somebody, I will blow people up - for whatever ideology that is about - it isn't good citizenship.

"If you don't actually subscribe to the things that make Britain, you're going to be in trouble."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6394619,00.html

British Embassy funded study of separation barrier

By Aluf Benn

Haaretz Tue., February 06, 2007

The British Embassy in Israel is helping to fund research on the enclaves created by the separation barrier around Palestinian villages in the West Bank. The study is being carried out by the non-governmental organization Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights. Officials from Bimkom say that the embassy contributed about 10,000 pounds sterling for the research and the report on the study, but did not interfere in its content.

A source in Israel's Foreign Ministry yesterday criticized the action. "It is interference by Britain in an internal Israeli matter. How would they react in London if our embassy was to fund research on a British organization that is trying to promote an agenda that is critical of [the government]? This is not acceptable in international relations."

The British Embassy issued the following response: "We recognize Israel's need and right to defend itself, but we believe the route of the separation fence should follow the Green Line. [Our] funding of the research was intended to examine the implications of the current route of the fence on the Palestinian population."

Bimkom's study, which was completed a few months ago, describes the difficulties that the fence causes for Palestinians in the enclaves on either side of the barrier. The authors of the report conclude that in addition to the security aims of the fence, it is also intended to aid the Jewish settlements and permit them to expand at the expense of the quality of life of the Palestinian residents.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett is currently on her first official visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In Israel she will meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and the chairman of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu. In Ramallah, Beckett will meet with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

In an announcement issued before her trip to "Israel and the Occupied Territories," Beckett said, "I want to see for myself the prospects for moving forward the political process."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/822205.html

Giuliani joins race for president

BBC Monday, 5 February 2007, 20:26 GMT

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has officially joined the running for the Republican nomination for the 2008 US presidential election.

The Federal Election Commission said Mr Giuliani had filed a "statement of candidacy" - a one-page form outlining a candidate's wish to seek office.

Mr Giuliani was widely praised for his response to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001.

He has remained in the public eye and is known as a moderate Republican.

The so-called statement of candidacy filed on Monday puts Mr Giuliani on the same level, legally, as Republican candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Unlike his main rivals, Mr Giuliani has been ambiguous about whether he would ultimately put himself forward for the Republican nomination.

Mr Giuliani set up an exploratory committee in November last year and said that he was "testing the waters".

Under US law, setting up such a committee allowed Mr Giuliani to travel the country to gauge support for a candidacy without formally declaring himself as a candidate.

'America's mayor'

Correspondents say being mayor, even in a city as big and important as New York, is not commonly regarded as normal preparation for a presidential campaign.

But in the chaos which followed the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center, Mr Giuliani emerged as a defiant and unifying leader, earning him the honorary, but unofficial, title of "America's mayor".

Since then, Mr Giuliani has remained in the public eye and is popular with the American people, particularly Republicans.

However, his relatively moderate views may make it difficult for him to persuade mainstream Republicans that he should be their presidential candidate.

His support for same-sex civil unions and embryonic stem cell research would put him to the left of most of his party members.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6333437.stm

Israeli minister: Free Barghouti

Al Jazeera MONDAY, FEBRUARY 05,2007

A senior political ally of the Israeli prime minister has said that Israel should release its most prominent Palestinian prisoner - a man convicted in fatal attacks on Israelis - in a bid to prop up Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. Gideon Ezra, the environment minister, is the second senior Israeli official to recently advocate the release of Marwan Barghouti of Abbas's Fatah movement.

Barghouti is the most popular leader in the Palestinian territories, and is widely regarded as the only figure able to unify clashing Palestinian factions, rein in militants and get peacemaking with Israel moving again. "If we want to blunt Hamas's capabilities ... and if we ultimately want a civil rather than a religious government like those taking shape across the Arab world, we have to make a contribution," Ezra told Army Radio, in defence of freeing Barghouti. "I think it could definitely help Abu Mazen [Abbas]." Power vacuum Abbas and his Fatah loyalists are engaged in an increasingly deadly power struggle with the ruling Hamas faction, which rejects Israel's right to exist and unseated Fatah in elections last year. The infighting has weakened Abbas as he tries to relaunch long-stalled peace talks with Israel, which considers him a legitimate negotiating alternative to Hamas. Miri Eisin, Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman, said the release of Barghouti - who is serving five life sentences for the murders of four Israelis and a Greek monk - was "not on the agenda". But Ezra, a member of Olmert's Kadima party, said Israel has freed "much worse murderers" in the past. Several weeks ago, the deputy defence minister, Ephraim Sneh of the Labour party, also championed Barghouti's release.

http://english.aljazeera.net/News/Templates/Postings/DetailedPage.aspx?FRAMELESS=false&NRNODEGUID=%7b9900A9A6-4C31-4055-81C8-18759B16CE47%7d&NRORIGINALURL=%2fNR%2fexeres%2f9900A9A6-4C31-4055-81C8-18759B16CE47%2ehtm&NRCACHEHINT=NoModifyGuest

Fitzgerald Targets Cheney in Libby Tapes

By MATT APUZZO

Associated Press Writer Tuesday February 6, 2007 1:01 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) - Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in tapes played Monday in the CIA leak trial, pressed Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff on whether Cheney had directed him to leak the identity of a CIA operative to reporters.

The audiotapes showed that Fitzgerald, just two months into his leak investigation, was asking pointed questions about the highest levels of government.

The first 90 minutes of audiotapes, recorded during the 2003 grand jury testimony of top Cheney aide I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, were played for jurors in Libby's perjury and obstruction trial. More than six hours of additional tapes were to be played Tuesday.

Fitzgerald began his questioning by determining what he already knew to be true - that Libby was not the source of syndicated columnist Robert Novak's story revealing that the wife of an outspoken Bush administration critic worked for the CIA.

Almost immediately after that, however, Fitzgerald steered the discussion toward Cheney and how his office responded to the growing criticism from former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who claimed to have led a fact-finding mission that refuted some prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Cheney's former spokeswoman, Cathie Martin, has testified that Cheney's office viewed Wilson's criticism as a direct attack on the president's credibility and was focused on beating it back.

During that effort, Libby said, Cheney mentioned in an offhand way in June 2003 that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. Fitzgerald asked whether Cheney was upset by the apparent ``nepotism'' in the fact Plame may have arranged the trip. Libby said he did not recall.

Fitzgerald, who questioned Libby in a non-confrontational, sometimes even casual manner, also asked whether Cheney expected Libby to share that with reporters, specifically Walter Pincus of The Washington Post. Libby said he did not.

Fitzgerald asked four times and in four different ways whether Libby could be absolutely sure he did not disclose the information to Pincus. Pincus never revealed Plame's identity.

``The vice president obviously thought it was important enough to share with you or interesting enough to color the background, correct?'' Fitzgerald said.

``Yes,'' Libby replied.

Fitzgerald never brought a leak charge. Libby, who is accused of lying about his conversations with reporters regarding Plame, is the only person charged in the case. Fitzgerald believes Libby lied to protect his job and reputation. Fitzgerald has never accused Libby of lying to protect Cheney.

Prosecutors say Libby learned about Plame from Cheney, passed it on to reporters, then concocted a story about learning her identity from NBC reporter Tim Russert. Defense attorneys say Libby forgot the information after hearing it from Cheney and learned it again from Russert as if it were new.

Fitzgerald has presented several witnesses, including former State Department Undersecretary Marc Grossman and CIA official Robert Grenier, who say they spoke to Libby about Plame well before he could have learned about her from Russert. In his grand jury testimony, Libby said he had no recollection of such conversations.

``Do you recall any conversation at any time when Secretary Grossman told you that the former ambassador's wife worked at the CIA?''

``I don't recall,'' Libby said.

``You have no memory of that whatsoever?'' Fitzgerald responded.

``I'm sorry sir, I don't,'' Libby replied.

Jurors followed along in their transcripts as Libby's testimony was played through the court speakers. Libby sat expressionless at the defense table, occasionally following along himself.

It is unusual for the government to make such extensive use of a defendant's taped grand jury testimony. The federal government did so 17 years ago in another high-profile criminal case in Washington, D.C., the drug trial of Washington Mayor Marion Barry.

^---

Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

Muslims hurl stones at J'lem dig underway near Temple Mount

Haaretz Tue., February 06, 2007

Police on Tuesday arrested four Muslim worshipers who threw stones at an Israel Antiquities Authority excavation underneath Mugrabi gate in Jerusalem's Old City.

The dig as part of a plan to rebuild the Mugrabi bridge walkway planned to run from the Dung gate to the Mugrabi gate, which serves as the primary entrance to the compound referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as al-Haram al-Sherif, the Noble Sanctuary.

The digging will use smaller excavating tools, and will be supervised by a team of archaeologists. The excavations are intended to strengthen the support columns of the Mugrabi bridge.

The four additional columns to be built will be located on the grounds of the "Archaeological Garden" next to the Dung Gate.

The project will replace the temporary wooden bridge built after the collapse of the previous ramp in 2004.

The Islamic Movement announced on Tuesday that it planned to hold a demonstration Friday against the excavations.

MK Talab El-Sana (United Arab List) warned on Tuesday that the excavations are likely to ignite a third intifada, that will include protests and conflict throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

"The Israeli government is again provoking the Muslim world and the Palestinian people, and is not hesitating to ignite the region on behalf of irresponsible decisions," El-Sana said.

According to El-Sana, the government is trying to "deflect attention away from their failures in the war in Lebanon."

Head of the northern branch of the Islamic movement Sheik Ra'ad Salah, and the head of Jerusalem's Supreme Muslim Council Ikrima Sabri called this week for all Muslims in Israel to flock to the Temple Mount complex to prevent Israel from actions that they say are meant to destroy the Mugrabi Gate.

In response, Police on Tuesday decided to restrict access to the Temple Mount and deployed security forces throughout the Old City of Jerusalem. Police fear that violent protest, specifically by members of the Israeli Islamic Movement, may break out in the city and have restricted all men under the age of 45 from Tuesday's prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. All Jews and tourists are also forbidden from the compound as part of the restrictions.

Jerusalem area Archaeologist Yuval Baruch stated that there is no intention to dig underneath the Temple Mount or to cause any damage to the Western Wall of the Mount. A source at the Israel Antiquities Authority stated today that "The incitement occurring in the Muslim world over the excavations is merely an attempt to twist a non-political act into something religious and divisive."

"The excavations are being carried out according to procedure by a team of professional archaeologists and experts," the source added.

Police markedly beefed up their presence Tuesday in Jerusalem's Old City, as tensions rose over Israeli construction work aimed at restoring the pathway leading from the Western Wall to the adjacent Temple Mount, Israel Radio reported.

The bridge is planned to run from the Dung gate to the Mugrabi gate, which serves as the primary entrance to the compound.

The Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques sit above the Western Wall in the compound referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as al-Haram al-Sherif, the Noble Sanctuary. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is Islam's third holiest shrine and has been a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the past.

The digging will use smaller excavating tools, and will be supervised by a team of archaeologists. The excavations are intended to strengthen the support columns of the Mugrabi bridge.

The project, meant to replace the temporary wooden bridge built after the collapse of the previous ramp in 2004, will install four additional support columns on the grounds of the 'Jerusalem Archaeological Park' next to the Dung Gate.

In recent weeks, militant Islamic leaders have warned that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is under threat from Israeli archeological excavation. They have urged followers to mobilize to block Israeli work near the compound.

MK Talab El-Sana (United Arab List) warned on Tuesday that the excavations are likely to ignite a third intifada, which will include protests and conflict throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

"The Israeli government is again provoking the Muslim world and the Palestinian people, and is not hesitating to ignite the region on behalf of irresponsible decisions," El-Sana said.

According to El-Sana, the government is trying to "deflect attention away from their failures in the war in Lebanon."

Head of the northern branch of the Islamic movement Sheik Ra'ad Salah, and the head of Jerusalem's Supreme Muslim Council Ikrima Sabri called this week for all Muslims in Israel to flock to the Temple Mount complex to prevent Israel from actions that they say are meant to destroy the Mugrabi Gate.

Mohammed Hussein, the top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem, told the Gaza Strip radio station of the Hamas militant movement that 'what is happening is an aggression, We call on the Palestinian people to unite and unify the efforts to protect Jerusalem.'

Adnan Husseini, the director of the Islamic Waqf, the trust that oversees that complex, said he was concerned the new walkway could damage the original earthen ramp, which he said was Waqf property and contained ruins of archaeological significance. The new construction constituted a violation of the site, he said.

This is a very dangerous project that will damage things of great historical value in this very sensitive place, Husseini said.

Husseini said he suspected that the excavations around the holy site were attempts to tunnel under it - a common allegation among Muslims, though one never substantiated - and demanded that Israel cease all digs immediately.

We call for an end to all excavations, he said.

Jordan, which has a custodial role over the site, expressed concern about the work there, according to the kingdom's official Petra news agency.

Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh quoted Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit as saying that the dig was a big concern to Jordan, its king, people and government, Petra reported.

The site is part of east Jerusalem, which was ruled by Jordan until Israel captured it and the adjacent West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.

In 1988, the current's king's father, King Hussein, renounced his country's claim to the West Bank, but maintained Jordan's authority to look after the mosques - a custodial role that Israel recognizes.

Jerusalem area Archaeologist Yuval Baruch stated that there is no intention to dig underneath the Temple Mount or to cause any damage to the Western Wall of the Mount. A source at the Israel Antiquities Authority stated today that "The incitement occurring in the Muslim world over the excavations is merely an attempt to twist a non-political act into something religious and divisive."

"The excavations are being carried out according to procedure by a team of professional archaeologists and experts," the source added.

Israeli officials have denied the allegations, saying that the charges are a ploy by Palestinians to help quell Fatah-Hamas infighting.

In a attempt to diffuse tension, Israeli authorities barred Jews and tourists from visiting the Temple Mount on Tuesday. In addition, 2,000 police were deployed in and around the Old City to maintain order, Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Authorities also limited entry to the compound to Muslim worshippers 45 years of age or older, who carry Israeli identification cards showing them to be residents of the city's eastern half.

Meshal condemns digsThe leader of Hamas Sunday condemned excavations by Israeli archaeologists near the Al-Aqsa mosque and warned they were "playing with fire."

"I have a stern warning for the enemy," Khaled Meshal said at a news conference in the Syrian capital.

"Sharon's desecration of the Aqsa sparked the 2000 uprising. The Israeli leadership must learn from this lesson. We have confidence in our people, its masses, all of its groups and military wings," he added.

The Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 after a visit, condemned in the Arab world, by then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the mosque compound in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied and annexed after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. "Israel knows what its violation of the holy Aqsa will bring. It is playing with fire," Meshal said.

In the 1980s, Israel uncovered a plot by a group of Jews to blow up Al-Aqsa in the hope that a new Jewish temple could be built at the site.

Muslim scholars say the excavations violate Aqsa's sanctity. Israeli officials say the work would not harm the structure of the mosque, which dates from the 7th century.

"We are facing a dangerous action. Jerusalem's Muslim and Christian holy sites are dear to all Palestinians. Israel is trying to take advantage of the Palestinian internal conflict to commit its crimes," Meshal said.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/822535.html

While Palestinians are distracted by meeting in Mecca, Israeli forces surround Al Aqsa Mosque and conduct excavations

Maan News Date: 06 / 02 / 2007 Time: 10:00

Jerusalem - Ma'an - The Israeli occupation forces closed the gates to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the old city of Jerusalem and deployed troops intensively in the streets and the area of Magharba (Moroccan or 'Dung') Gate on Tuesday morning.

Ma'an's correspondent reported that the Israeli forces began the operation in the early hours of Tuesday morning, in an attempt to prevent Palestinians from entering the mosque.

The Israeli forces deployed hundreds of policemen and soldiers in the area of the old city and prevented Palestinians from approaching the area or entering the old city, and the students from going to their schools inside the city.

The higher Fatwa Council expressed worries that the Israeli authorities will demolish part of the Magharba gate, taking advantage of the internal strife between Fatah and Hamas and the Palestinian focus on the meeting in Mecca on Tuesday, as a distraction, while they execute plans to bulldoze Palestinian areas in east Jerusalem and continue to judaize Jerusalem.

Palestine Supreme Judge Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi called on Palestinians to go to the mosque in order to protect it from Israeli bulldozers. He also called upon Arab and Muslim countries to immediately move to defend the mosque. He told Al Jazeera satellite channel that the "Israelis are threatening the mosque and endangering it."

Tamimi added that Israel is taking advantage of the internal strife in the Palestinian territories to execute plans in the holy city of Jerusalem.

Israeli bulldozers have started demolishing a wooden fence and two rooms near the Wailing Wall after days of excavating a new tunnel under the holy Al Aqsa Mosque.

Ma'an's reporter said that the Israeli police force was deployed intensively in the old city as a precautionary measure. The Israeli police said that the work is intended to support a stairwell that leads to Al Magharba gate, which was weathered by a snow storm two years ago.

The Israeli forces prevented all Palestinians under the age of 45 from entering the old city or the mosque to avoid any confrontation between angered Palestinians and the Israeli forces. According to the Islamic Waqf administration, two halls beneath the mosque will threaten the mosque's foundations, if they are removed.

Excavation director in the Israeli authority of excavations, told Al Jazeera satellite channel that the excavations are not in the mosque and will not threaten it, he said it is a simple maintenance operation.

Imam of the Al Aqsa Mosque, Dr Yousef Salama, called upon Arabs and Muslims throughout the world to "protect the mosque from the threat to its foundations and Israeli plans to demolish it and build an alleged temple."

Salama warned of the consequences of this act, saying that "almost a billion-and-a-half Muslims in this world are watching Israeli acts and their hearts and eyes are looking at the holy mosque." He condemned Israeli aggressions against the mosque and said that "Israel has decided to demolish the mosque, even the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, said that the settlers finished making a golden lantern in 2001 to put in the temple after it is built on the ruins of the mosque."

Salama added that "the relationship between Muslims and the mosque should be based on a strong faith," he called on Arabs and Muslims to go out into the streets to demonstrate against Israeli acts in the city .

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=19261

Canadian government forming pro-Israel lobby

Etgar Lefkovits,

THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 4, 2007

The Canadian government is establishing an "Israel Allies Caucus" this week meant to mobilize support for the State of Israel and promote Judeo-Christian values amid a groundswell of Christian support for Israel around the world.

The launching of the Canadian parliamentary lobby, which is based on the formation of the Knesset's "Christian Allies Caucus" three years ago, comes less than six months after a similar lobby was established in the US Congress.

The establishment of the new pro-Israel lobby will be officially announced in Ottawa on Tuesday in the presence of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canadian and Israeli parliamentarians, including MK Benny Elon (National Union-National Religious Party) MK Orit Noked (Labor) and MK Ran Cohen (Meretz), as well as members of the Canadian-Israel Friendship League.

The event comes at a time of burgeoning relations between Israel and the largely supportive evangelical Christian community around the world.

"The launching of the Canadian Parliamentary Israel Allies Caucus is a sign of things to come," said Josh Reinstein, director of the Knesset's Christian Allies Caucus in an interview from Canada on Sunday.

"We hope that one day every parliament and government around the world will form a sister caucus to the Knesset's Christian Allies Caucus which will mobilize support for Israel around the world and promote Judeo-Christian values."

Over the next six months, similar parliamentary lobbies are expected to be established in the Philippines, South Korea, Malawi, South Africa and Finland.

The increasingly influential Israeli parliamentary lobby, which is currently made up of 12 MKs from seven parties across the political spectrum, has come to epitomize Israel's newfound interest in garnering the support of the Christian world in the 21st century, especially the largely pro-Israel evangelical Christian community around the world, at a time when radical Islam is on the rise.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359780973&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer